Archive for May 2009

In part one of this post, we left Janice* and Rhonda* in Janice’s office. Janice, the manager of her company’s governance group, is furious that Rhonda, who works for her, has been circumventing the process that the PMO is supposed to be enforcing. Furthermore, I’d learned in out initial complimentary consultation that Janice has built some resentment towards Rhonda because of some things she’s observed Rhonda doing over the last year, but Janice never addressed it.

I am a *huge* Wayne Dyer fan, and I am honored to be a sponsor for the launch of his new book “Excuses Begone! How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits”

http://promos.hayhouse.com/dyer/052609email/

This is, after all, a large part of what I do as a coach. Besides partnering with clients to identify and change their self-defeating thinking habits, we facilitate their better thinking. I invite you to read more about how this book came about, right from Wayne Dyer:

We humans are a complex bunch. We haven’t quite evolved to where our pre-frontal cortex can separate out fact from perception, as much as we might think and believe that we have. I haven’t. You haven’t.

So, what does that mean and why should you care?

Well, whenever we have a difference of opinion we tend to take our own side. Never is that more true than when we know we’re right. Because, when we’re right, we are right, and that means that there is no “other side of the story.”

Randy Pausch wrote his book The Last Lecture partly as a way to leave a legacy to his children when he knew that he would not live to see them grow up. Ironically, had he not had the pancreatic cancer that took his life, most of us would never have known this computer science engineer and professor whose fame was mostly within the computer science community.

Part of the resentment Baby Boomers have towards the younger generations in the workforce is the ease in which they express “What’s In It For Me?”

It stems from the remnants of company loyalty and fealty that were drummed into their heads when they were starting out; even though our boomers mostly know intellectually that there is very little reciprocity of loyalty, old habits die hard. The “rules” say that it is unseemly to always be asking that question.

Creating “Personal Curb Appeal” is the most important lesson that all of us can take from the Sales body of knowledge. Whether we are job seekers, entrepreneurs, leaders, or employees, we all perform sales, every day. One of the keys to our success, whether it is landing that job, winning that sale or getting buy-in for our ideas, the people we need on board have to respect us and trust us. That starts with curb appeal.

For smaller companies, this is a great time to attract fantastic talent. There are many experienced, accomplished people on the job market right now, and many of them are looking for opportunities where they can contribute and create exponential growth. The challenge for many leaders who come from larger companies is that there seems to be a bias against them based on myths that started with people who’ve never worked in a Fortune 500 organization. Today, we’re going to explore the three most common myths and how to address them.